The sound of a finance minister who has spent most of his working life at the country’s largest bank, complaining about his children’s financial circumstances, would raise eyebrows in many of the world’s leading cities. Not so, Toronto.

The Lees bought a three-bedroom, semi-detached house last spring, just before the Toronto area’s property fever broke. They paid about $700,000 for the kind of home with a yard they could not afford near their old condo in Etobicoke.

This year’s real estate spectacular has a celebrity speaker roster that includes actor Sylvester Stallone, former baseball star Alex Rodriguez and Dragons’ Den’s Manjit Minhas, while last year’s lineup featured well-known life coach Tony Robbins. A ticket for this year’s event costs anywhere between $149 to $5,995.

For the first time, said Toronto Community Housing Corporation (TCHC) spokesperson Danièle Gauvin, the agency is allocating units through a random “computer generated scrambling system.” By a late February deadline, 3,754 people had filled out a complete application for 59 new units in Regent Park. That’s odds of about 1.5 in 100, compared to 1 in 13,983,816 for the big payout of Lotto 6/49.

His comments come after the IMF in October said that Canada's high debt levels, and higher-than-average pressure on Canadian households' ability to pay down that debt in the private non-financial sector, leaves its economy more sensitive to tighter financial conditions and weaker economic activity.

“Montreal has been Canada’s ‘dark horse’ in luxury real estate,” said Brad Henderson, president and chief executive of Sotheby’s International Realty Canada. “For many years, political uncertainty and a stagnant economy tethered performance, but those factors have now dissipated. This spring, we expect strong gains that will set new records for the city.”

And it’s not just happening in Reno. Austin, Tex.; Boise, Idaho; Denver; Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; and Seattle have all seen a huge influx of home buyers from California, according to the real estate website Zillow. A common thread is that each of these cities faces a growing housing crisis that, while not as severe as California’s, is setting off many of the same debates.

In December, the Los Angeles City Council voted to create a permanent revenue stream for its affordable housing program by slapping a fee on new homes and apartments. The “linkage fee” ranges from $8 per square foot in South Central L.A to $15 on the city’s wealthy Westside. That will put a $15,000 surcharge on a 1,000-square-foot apartment in a place like Culver City, with that money going toward the city’s efforts to create and preserve housing for low-income renters and the homeless.

It’s a statewide, and nationwide, problem, but it’s especially pronounced in Seattle; according to a report released by Remax earlier this week, the Seattle metro area is tied only with Denver for lowest housing inventory and has one of the fastest markets in the country, driving up competition and prices for would-be buyers.

Commercial property such as shopping malls and office buildings are the most common Reit assets globally, because rental income from such developments is more stable than residential rents. But in China, the government’s campaign to develop rental housing markets is raising expectations for residential Reits.